How news sites classify columns as news or opinion seems often to be quite arbitrary. Rather often, a fact-based account is consigned to the opinion section mostly because it is examining the situation from a point of view other than that of the currently dominant political perspective. Such was the case with a recent piece by Guardian columnist, Nesrine Malik:
Mesilla's San Albino has a design very similar to San Felipe de Neri in Albuquerque, but of more modest proportions. The Plaza in front of the church was a little crowded with vendors, but it still seemed a calm and inviting place to visit on a sunny Sunday morning. When we arrived in the Plaza the morning service was being broadcast to the neighborhood, and then the large number of parishioners in their Sunday-best began to file out, pausing to shake hands with the clergy.
That is Margaret walking into the coffee shop across the street from the church. The building is a thick walled adobe which was the residence of a lady named Josephine, and the shop was first known as Josephine's Gate until it got its current name recently.
The coffee and pastries are good, the large outdoor seating area is nicely shaded and the accomplished guitarist provided some nice sound as we killed an hour prior to meeting up with our daughters for lunch in Las Cruces.
Mesilla and the surrounding area was still a part of Mexico until well into the 19th Century. Today it is about an hour north of the border.
On the previous evening we had enjoyed a family reunion dinner at Mesilla's biggest restaurant, La Posta.
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| Ships Departing by Paul Klee |
Klee had been a favorite from the time I was a child. I was very taken by his use of color in his abstract compositions. I particularly remembered a picture of his depicting a reclining nude in a rainforest setting.
When I got home I searched the Web for that particular picture I remembered with such fondness. It came as quite a surprise that no such painting by Klee seems to exist. Looking around at the work of other artists of the same period I decided that what I thought I remembered as a work by Klee was probably The Dream, painted in 1910 by Henri Rousseau.
So, a very long-held and cherished memory was a very poor representation of reality. It got me thinking about what memories consist of, how they are stored and recalled, and what unreliable records they often are. One of the things that distinguishes this particular memory is that it was possible for me to test its accuracy. Many -- perhaps most -- memories are not so easily verified or refuted.
"Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies." - Julio Cortázar
Reading the Saturday morning paper I was pleasantly surpirsed to see that there was a fly-in airshow in progress at the Double Eagle Airport on Albuquerque's West Side. I packed a couple cameras and headed across town in Margaret's Nissan Versa. (She had gotten a ride to Santa Fe with friends and the Nissan is nicer to drive than my old pickup.)
I took Central to Atrisco Vista and headed up the road to the airfield. Some construction barriers partially blocked the road. I went straight in the absence of signs and landed on some rough road. Hitting a pothole while going too fast blew out the front-right tire.
I decided I could drive on the deflated tire and headed back a half mile to a truck stop. I parked and opened the trunk to start the tire change. I found that the cover over the spare's compartment had some weird latch that I couldn't seem to figure out.
I pried open one side of the compartment cover. I could see the spare and the jack, but there was no rod for raising the jack and no lug wrench. Time to go for some help.
I went to the repair shop where I found a couple people working on a big truck. I was told they could not work on a car and I was given a road service number to call. I called, but no one answered.
I went around to the gas station/convenience store and asked at the counter for a service contact number. Nobody knew any. Then, a big kid working behind the counter said "I can help fix the problem".
The kid went out with me to where the car was parked and quickly figured out that the spare tire compartment cover needed to be rotated to open. He took out the little spare tire, and using his jack and tools, had it on the car in about five minutes. What a relief!
We walked back into the store together. On the way he told me his was a freshman at UNM majoring in BA. I got eighty bucks from the ATM and gave half to the kid. He tried to give me twenty back. "No", I said, "you earned it."
Social media has enabled unfounded conspiracy theories to propagate at lightning speed. Such distortions of reality, however, are not a new phenomenon. The earliest I can personally recall occurred in 1954 when I lived near Seattle. It was the Windshield Pitting Mystery. The first reports originated in the nearby community of Bellingham where - as reported by local papers - "tiny holes, pits, and dings ... seemingly appeared in the windshields of cars at an unprecedented rate" Purveyors of the story came up with explanations which included cosmic rays, sand-flea eggs and fallout from H-bomb tests.
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| Seattle Post- Intelligencer Collection |
Police departments in the Northwest were forced to exhaustively investigate the windshield stories and soon concluded that the whole thing was the product of what was deemed at the time as an example of collective hysteria.
A careful combing of news archives would no doubt turn up many similar examples of theories based on flimsy reasoning. I particularly recall a couple from the 1990s which appeared among communities of people looking for explanations and relief from disabling psychological and developmental conditions.
I was employed for a time as a training program developer by an agency providing care services for people who needed extensive help in meeting the challenges of daily life. We frequently relied on presentations to staff by therapists from the area who were familiar with issues of the population we served. One such therapist came with an invitation from our program's director to tell us about her practice of Recovered Memory Therapy.
The underlying assertion of the therapeutic approach was that people commonly repressed memories of sexual abuse which led to severe psychological problems later in life. The therapist which came to address our staff claimed to be able to help people uncover the repressed memories and thus appropriately address the treatment leading to recovery.
I recall being very skeptical myself about the claims made about the Recovered Memory techniques. I do not remember any very clear opinions from other staff about the presentation and I do not know if any referrals to that kind of therapy were generated by the agency I worked for. However, the beliefs and practices related to the idea of recoverable memories of abuse became entrenched in therapeutic practices on a very wide scale.
Ultimately, the claims of value in the Recalled Memory movement were debunked by real scientific investigation, but not before a lot of damage was done to patients and their families. Even now after many years it is not hard to find remnants and variations of the movement which include beliefs in the existence of cults of satanic child abuse, as was alleged during the attacks on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.
Another destructive outbreak of pseudoscience in the disability treatment field contributed to my decision to quit the agency that employed me. I recall going to a big training session which included people from all over New Mexico in which a case was made for using Facilitated Communication for non-verbal autistic people.
The idea was that the afflicted people could spell out meaningful messages on a typewriter with a facilitator providing physical support at the elbow. The likelihood of deception was so transparent that I stood up in the middle of the presentation to point out the problems with the approach, and also to express doubt that the presenters had not seen the many available news articles about the refutation by legitimate scientific sources of any validity in the technique.
Today, we see many examples of rational and ethical failures similar to those of the past. What is new is that the damage is routinely being amplified by government agencies which originally offered some protection from such abuses. Perhaps real science will come to our rescue as in the past, but there seems no clear path to that at the moment.
The daily onslaught of right-wing political atrocities makes it hard at times to maintain any sense of optimism about a rational way forward. I found a NY Times article today that seemed very encouraging about the two rising stars of the progressive left:
The Wary, Warming, Wildly Consequential Alliance of Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani
The combinations of lens elements provide a high degree of resolution along with minimizing aberrations with the widest possible aperture for each design type. Glass of great purity was essential to the process of sharp image formation.
The lenses in my Iphone also have seven elements, but they embody complex aspherical shapes made possible by computer aided design and ultra-miniaturazation. It would be physically impossible to form such tiny lenses using the mechanical polishing processes for glass lenses.
Instead, the cellphone lenses are made of injection molded plastic with very high light transmission qualities.
Trump’s Chicago Occupation Could Cost Four Times More Than Housing City Homeless
Sending troops to Chicago could cost $1.6 million per day, four times as much as housing the city’s homeless — plus it’s illegal, experts say.
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Trump’s domestic troop deployments aren’t about crime – they’re about intimidation
by Moira Donegan in The Guardian
Margaret spotted this butterfly sitting in a puddle near our mailbox.
We thought at first it might be in trouble. However, it flew away when I approached -- and then returned again and again. Just thirsty.
noun: redundancy
The United States has five major, permanently inhabited territories: Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. These territories are geographically distinct from the 50 states and have their own local governments, but are also subject to the laws of the U.S. federal government. (Google)
Washingtn D.C should be added to the list as it has its own local government, but is also subject to the laws of the U.S. federal government.
I doubt that Trump's grasp of history and geography includes any of the above, or the fact that his current residence was built by slave labor. If he did know that, do you suppose he would be bothered by it?
See Rebecca Solnit's current article in The Guardian for an overview of the current circus in the District of Columbia.
Trump Is Launching a Hostile Takeover of Puerto Rico (Jacobin)
When we lived in San Francisco in the 1970s there were two big news services offices there, the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International(UPI). I sold some of my news photos to them, and those were then distributed internationally. The UPI began a steep decline in the 1980s along with newspapers in general, and sold its broadcast services to the AP.
The news services were originally called "wire services" because their news
accumulation and distribution were over telegraph wires. Telephone
wires and transatlantic cables then took over the job until everything
moved to the Internet.
Now, the remaining big players are AP, Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP). The AFP requires a subscription, but AP and Reuters are free and good general news sources. Google News accumulates stories from all over, but the sources vary widely in quality and objectivity. A lot of people these days -- perhaps a majority -- look to social media like Facebook for their news, and that, unfortunately. is pretty much the bottom of the news barrel.
Given the ongoing decline of newspapers everywhere, journalists have struggled to keep their profession viable, in part by founding state-level cooperative news agencies. In New Mexico that includes Source New Mexico and Searchlight New Mexico.
I've looked for a long time to Haaretz for news from Israel and reassurance that some effective resistance to Netanyahu still exists there. Unfortunately, I see now that the newspaper online has had to go to a subscription-only format. I'll have to give some thought to whether I want to pay to get beyond just the headlines.
Aljazeera provides free and thorough access to news about the area, but there are no Israeli voices.
Just enough water left in the river for Roxie to get her feet wet.
"...This is the third time in four years the river has run dry. It was unheard of for decades before 2022. But this year seems to be the earliest we’ve seen it happen in recent memory. For anyone who drives, or walks by, it’s a grim sign of climate change for New Mexico.
Data from the EPA shows the snowpack that feeds the Rio Grande has been steadily dropping since the 1950s... " - KOB Ch.4
Democrats and the media are way too enthusiastic about the possibility that the Epstein files will have some important negative effect on Trump's popularity with the bulk of his MAGA followers.
What is being overlooked is the 2016 video resulting from the Access Hollywood interview in which Trump candidly revealed the depth of his depravity.
Recall that what followed the publishing of that interview was the election of Trump to the Presidency.
People like Bondi, Patel and Vance will be momentarily embarrassed by their previous advocacy for release of the Epstein grand jury hearing details, but Trump's teflon coating will remain intact.
When we went to watch the flamenco performance on Saturday in Old Town I felt compelled to stop momentarily to photograph this Chevrolet. Several other people stopped to admire the car also, impressed by the faultless restoration.
I thought my little Canon digital nicely captured the character of the car. The camera is not as compact as my Panasonic Lumix, but it has the virtue of an eye-level viewfinder which makes sunny day photos feasible.
The street past our house is being repaved. The work starts at 6AM.
The early start to the workday is understandable with temperatures reaching 100 degrees.
The work is half done at three weeks.
I posted on my photography blog about Albuquerque's Flamenco tradition. Later that same day I got an email announcing a performance the following day in the Old Town gazebo by the Spanish Broom group. So, that set the agenda for Saturday. We started the evening with a fine Mexican dinner at the Church Street Cafe. There were some dark clouds over the city when we walked to the Plaza, but then the setting sun peeked under them to light up the dancers.
The dancers, the guitarist, the tabla player and the cantaoras were all excellent.
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| flamenco futures |
Little seems to get said in the press about the ongoing attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank; they are smaller in scale than the devastating bombardments to the south in Gaza, but even more vicious in some ways. A good source of reporting on events is David Schulman who periodically writes in The New York Review of Books. His latest brief report, "Netanyahu's War", looks at the courageous efforts of Israeli human rights activists to ameliorate the unrelenting attacks on Palestinian families by the invading Israeli settlers with the aid of soldiers and police. Schulman also succinctly profiles the perpetrators:
UPDATE
Featured on the evening news was ICEBLOCK, an Iphone app which records and reports sightings of ICE agents within a 5-mile radius. (I don't have an Iphone. I would be interested in assessments of the app in the Albuquerque area.)
I like my little Lumix digital camera. Its 10 megapixels is fine for online photo sharing, and at just 7/8 inch thick it slips easily into a pocket. The lack of an eye-level finder limits its sunny day usefulness, but I've posted a lot of pictures from it.
Recently, a couple spots started showing up in the images from the camera and I was pretty sure it was some dust on the sensor. I decided to try cleaning the sensor following the instructions provided in this Graham Houghton YouTube video.
The camera in the video was not exactly the same model as mine, but it was close enough so I encountered little difficulty in following the instructions. It would have been helpful to have some magnifying glasses to see the small parts in tight spaces.
As the video warned, the little IR filter was stuck to the inside back of case when I opened it. What I was not prepared for was that the tiny piece of plastic filter material and the small rubber frame would flutter separately down to the desktop. I had to guess the proper orientation of the component on reassembly, but it seems to be ok.
Other than the issue with the filter, there was little difficulty in the process, and just brushing off the filter and the sensor has resulted in dust-free images from the camera.
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| Margaret at Level 5 at the Chaco Hotel |
I've read two books recently on the subject of music, but I still don't have any sense of rhythm. I can't say I''m surprised at that outcome. However, there are dimensions to music beyond the tap - tap - tap. I feel I have at least made some gains in historical perspective about blues and jazz traditions thanks to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Y. Davis.
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| "Ma" Rainey |
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| Billie Holiday - Wikipedia |
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| wikipedia |
A picture of ex-congressman Robert Menendez about to begin his eleven-year imprisonment got me thinking again about the desired and actual value of incarceration. I'm sure such penalties do make politicians more careful in how they subvert the law, but it seems pretty clear the threat is not really effective as a deterrent.
Our local DA has been harping lately on the need for accountability to discourage criminal activity, including gun violence committed by teenagers. I would suggest that locking up children is of no use whatsoever. The issue with teenagers and a lot of immature adults is largely one of impulse control. That kind of personality deficit is immune to anything short of immediate consequences. Publicizing the idea that violent acts might result in getting caught and suffering legal retribution has all the deterrent impact of a mosquito bite.
Meanwhile, the eleven-year sentence handed down to Menendez is going the have the primary result of costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands. It seems to me that a more effective strategy would be to put the congressman to work doing useful tasks in the community like street cleaning, perhaps in a striped uniform. (And, just a year or two of that might suffice.) Of course, there would still be a cost in regard to compliance and security, but at least taxpayers would be getting something tangible for their money.
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Ex-Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner given house arrest (Aljazera)
Prison abolition movement in the United States (wikipedia)
A very good analysis of the extent and significance of the No Kings protests is at Jacobin.
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| Getty Images |
I think that one thing the demonstrations point to is that, in a country where a rather small percentage of the eligible voters bother to cast a ballot, the winner will be the candidate that turns out the most voters, regardless of majority sentiments.
Trump is certainly providing a lot of motivation. We'll see if that motivation is maintained among the democracy defenders. The mid-terms will be a good test in terms of both the voter turnout, as well as the extent to which members of Congress are paying attention.
I found this little Praying Mantis on my desk this evening.
I thought at first that it had a bit of lint caught on its tail. On looking at a closer shot it seemed he had just crawled out of his skin as he grew too big for it.
I found a youtube video of a fellow demonstrating how to ride. I saw that he had a very upright posture and he was steering with just two fingers. That encouraged me to try again following his example. I also found that pushing the handlebar on the side opposite the desired turn direction was a better technique. Once I was able to get myself up and down the street, the process began to seem more natural and intuitive.
The Old Trike
I played around with 3D drawing programs about twenty years ago and one of my first efforts was to reconstruct my memory of my first trike in the mid-1940s. I don't recall any difficulty in learning to ride this one. Kids seem to take to the task with no problem.
Happy trails!
